Says Rumania Labor Act Hits Only at Aliens

March 21, 1935

Washington (Mar. 20)

The National Labor Law in Rumania, which threatens to throw many Jews out of employment, will be applied against professionals of foreign citizenship only and does not aim to displace Jewish employes by Rumanian, the Rumanian minister in Washington today informed the Union of Rumanian Jews of America.

The information came as a reply to representations made by the Union to Minister Davila at the Rumanian Legation in Washington, expressing concern over the fate of many Jewish employes in connection with the new labor law enacted by the Rumanian government, requiring each employe to state his ethnical origin.

SOUGHT DATA ONLY

“This requirement was made only for purely informative and statistical reasons,” Minister Davila says in his letter to the Union of Rumanian Jews.

“It appears to me,” the letter says, “that those fears, here and abroad, were aroused by the questionnaire sent by the Department of Commerce and Industry in which, among different categories of specifications, there was one concerning the ethnical origin.

“In reply to my telegram asking for an explanation, the Rumanian Foreign Office informed me that the above mentioned specification was made only for ‘purely informative and statistical reasons and exists already in the same form in the questionnaires issued in connection with the general census.’ The Foreign Office adds, pointing to the rules of the National Labor Law published in the ‘Monitorul Official’ of January 31, 1935, to that ‘the law, the rules and the decisions do not create any kind of discriminatory treatment among Rumanian citizens based on their ethnical origin, but established only the percentage of foreign nationals admitted to function in Rumanian enterprises.’

“Similarly, I received from the Department of Labor an address showing that ‘measures for the